23/11/2012
NEWS STORY
The final Friday of the season for Scuderia Ferrari and the eleven other teams at the Interlagos circuit, host to the twentieth and final round of the 2012 World Championship. Between them, Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa completed 131 laps, 65 for the Spaniard and 66 for the Brazilian. Both cars ran trouble free in very demanding weather conditions given the high temperatures.
Fernando Alonso: It was very hot out on the circuit today and, especially this afternoon, the track temperatures were well above normal, even for this circuit. We have not yet found the ideal balance on the car, so there is still a lot of work to be done with the engineers going into the rest of the weekend. The predictions are for very different conditions from Saturday to Sunday, further reason to concentrate on the best choices when it comes to preparing the car for qualifying, but especially for the race. After so many Fridays, there is nothing much new to say about the tyres: the Hards appear to be more consistent, while the Mediums produce a quicker lap time. It's hard to say if we prefer rain or the dry: as I said before, it is vital to be prepared to tackle both situations. We know we have to score 14 points more than Vettel for the Championship and not lose the same number to McLaren to maintain our second place in the Constructors'. Our targets are clear, but also difficult to achieve.
Felipe Massa: A very busy Friday in terms of our work on track, with a lot of kilometres completed to find the best set-up for the car. I am reasonably pleased with my times, especially when it comes to pace over a long run: I think I was the fastest man on track in the final part of the session. On my first lap with the Mediums, I lost a few tenth at the second corner, so, in terms of an outright time, I could have done even better than fourth place. The tyres are the same, but their performance is completely different to what we saw in Austin last week: definitely degradation is much higher here and so I don't think we will see a one-stop strategy. The helmet? It's odd not seeing anything yellow in the mirrors to the extent that sometimes I thought it wasn't me at the wheel!
Pat Fry: We have reached the very tight finale and today it was important that we managed to complete our entire planned programme: we did it and that is already a first, if small positive step. We worked this morning on evaluating various aerodynamic solutions, while in the afternoon, we concentrated mainly on a comparison of the two types of tyre brought here by Pirelli. It's always difficult to assess the hierarchy in the pit lane on a Friday and today was not different. From what we can see a few minutes after the end of the session, we can say that we are reasonably competitive, especially over a long run. We are well aware that, in order to reach our objectives, first and foremost we will need to be perfect in everything we do and be ready to exploit whatever opportunity might come our way. It's not just the Drivers' title that's up for grabs, as there is also a second place in the Constructors' classification which is actually something quite important for us.
Check out our Friday gallery, here.